Spain’s Sergio Baxter Cabrera was clearly the strongest runner of the day: with a run time of 16:38 minutes, over a rather long 5K, he was first across the line at the Europe Triathlon Cup in Holten, the Netherlands. He shared the podium with Britain’s Jack Willis (+0:07) and fellow Britt Thomas Bishop (+0:11).
After the swim, it were Swiss Sasha Caterina and the Dutch Mitch Kolkman, who had created a little gap towards the rest of the field, but that advantage wasn’t big enough to keep athletes off from merging into a big lead pack. Counting around 25 athletes, the first group was big, and that was not to everyone’s liking. A few athletes tried to break the field apart by placing some attacks, among them Bishop and British Ben Dijkstra.
Unfortunately for the stronger cyclists, they weren’t able to break the group apart and to stay clear of the chasing group, which meant that after a few kilometers everything came back together, creating a lead pack of more than 40 athletes. Dutch Jorik van Egdom – who came from the chase group – and Bishop decided to take off soon after the groups united. While in the back of the lead pack a few athletes crashed, in front Van Egdom and Bishop hit the gas.
A few moments later, Dijkstra, Willis, Baxter Cabrera and Delian Stateff (ITA) also made the jump to these two athletes and therefor formed a lead group of six. In the final lap, these six athletes created a buffer of six seconds towards the chasers.
On the run, Baxter Cabrera and Willis were off straight away. Clearly, Baxter Cabrera had the strongest run legs of the day, because it didn’t take long before Willis had to let go of the strong Spaniard. While Baxter Cabrera remained worried about what was happening behind him – he was constantly looking back – he ran towards the victory, noting a finish time of 53:27 minutes. Willis settled in second and Bishop completed the podium. Baxter Cabrera was definitely not the only athlete who stumbled across the finish line, because many other athletes crashed over a bump too.
